xref: /openbmc/u-boot/doc/README.nand (revision 2906e6d6)
1NAND FLASH commands and notes
2
3See NOTE below!!!
4
5# (C) Copyright 2003
6# Dave Ellis, SIXNET, dge@sixnetio.com
7#
8# See file CREDITS for list of people who contributed to this
9# project.
10#
11# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
12# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
13# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
14# the License, or (at your option) any later version.
15#
16# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
17# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
18# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
19# GNU General Public License for more details.
20#
21# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
22# along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
23# Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
24# MA 02111-1307 USA
25
26Commands:
27
28   nand bad
29      Print a list of all of the bad blocks in the current device.
30
31   nand device
32      Print information about the current NAND device.
33
34   nand device num
35      Make device `num' the current device and print information about it.
36
37   nand erase off|partition size
38   nand erase clean [off|partition size]
39      Erase `size' bytes starting at offset `off'. Alternatively partition
40      name can be specified, in this case size will be eventually limited
41      to not exceed partition size (this behaviour applies also to read
42      and write commands). Only complete erase blocks can be erased.
43
44      If `erase' is specified without an offset or size, the entire flash
45      is erased. If `erase' is specified with partition but without an
46      size, the entire partition is erased.
47
48      If `clean' is specified, a JFFS2-style clean marker is written to
49      each block after it is erased.
50
51      This command will not erase blocks that are marked bad. There is
52      a debug option in cmd_nand.c to allow bad blocks to be erased.
53      Please read the warning there before using it, as blocks marked
54      bad by the manufacturer must _NEVER_ be erased.
55
56   nand info
57      Print information about all of the NAND devices found.
58
59   nand read addr ofs|partition size
60      Read `size' bytes from `ofs' in NAND flash to `addr'.  Blocks that
61      are marked bad are skipped.  If a page cannot be read because an
62      uncorrectable data error is found, the command stops with an error.
63
64   nand read.oob addr ofs|partition size
65      Read `size' bytes from the out-of-band data area corresponding to
66      `ofs' in NAND flash to `addr'. This is limited to the 16 bytes of
67      data for one 512-byte page or 2 256-byte pages. There is no check
68      for bad blocks or ECC errors.
69
70   nand write addr ofs|partition size
71      Write `size' bytes from `addr' to `ofs' in NAND flash.  Blocks that
72      are marked bad are skipped.  If a page cannot be read because an
73      uncorrectable data error is found, the command stops with an error.
74
75      As JFFS2 skips blocks similarly, this allows writing a JFFS2 image,
76      as long as the image is short enough to fit even after skipping the
77      bad blocks.  Compact images, such as those produced by mkfs.jffs2
78      should work well, but loading an image copied from another flash is
79      going to be trouble if there are any bad blocks.
80
81   nand write.oob addr ofs|partition size
82      Write `size' bytes from `addr' to the out-of-band data area
83      corresponding to `ofs' in NAND flash. This is limited to the 16 bytes
84      of data for one 512-byte page or 2 256-byte pages. There is no check
85      for bad blocks.
86
87Configuration Options:
88
89   CONFIG_CMD_NAND
90      Enables NAND support and commmands.
91
92   CONFIG_MTD_NAND_ECC_JFFS2
93      Define this if you want the Error Correction Code information in
94      the out-of-band data to be formatted to match the JFFS2 file system.
95      CONFIG_MTD_NAND_ECC_YAFFS would be another useful choice for
96      someone to implement.
97
98   CONFIG_SYS_MAX_NAND_DEVICE
99      The maximum number of NAND devices you want to support.
100
101   CONFIG_SYS_NAND_MAX_CHIPS
102      The maximum number of NAND chips per device to be supported.
103
104NOTE:
105=====
106
107The current NAND implementation is based on what is in recent
108Linux kernels.  The old legacy implementation has been disabled,
109and will be removed soon.
110
111If you have board code which used CONFIG_NAND_LEGACY, you'll need
112to convert to the current NAND interface for it to continue to work.
113
114The Disk On Chip driver is currently broken and has been for some time.
115There is a driver in drivers/mtd/nand, taken from Linux, that works with
116the current NAND system but has not yet been adapted to the u-boot
117environment.
118
119Additional improvements to the NAND subsystem by Guido Classen, 10-10-2006
120
121JFFS2 related commands:
122
123  implement "nand erase clean" and old "nand erase"
124  using both the new code which is able to skip bad blocks
125  "nand erase clean" additionally writes JFFS2-cleanmarkers in the oob.
126
127Miscellaneous and testing commands:
128  "markbad [offset]"
129  create an artificial bad block (for testing bad block handling)
130
131  "scrub [offset length]"
132  like "erase" but don't skip bad block. Instead erase them.
133  DANGEROUS!!! Factory set bad blocks will be lost. Use only
134  to remove artificial bad blocks created with the "markbad" command.
135
136
137NAND locking command (for chips with active LOCKPRE pin)
138
139  "nand lock"
140  set NAND chip to lock state (all pages locked)
141
142  "nand lock tight"
143  set NAND chip to lock tight state (software can't change locking anymore)
144
145  "nand lock status"
146  displays current locking status of all pages
147
148  "nand unlock [offset] [size]"
149  unlock consecutive area (can be called multiple times for different areas)
150
151
152I have tested the code with board containing 128MiB NAND large page chips
153and 32MiB small page chips.
154